Database Develop

[Q] How much RAM?

How much RAM does the Captivate really have? Reason I ask is my friend's Droid Incredible constantly has about 270-280MB free, even when he was on 2.1. My Captivate has about 150MB free after doing a task kill. I thought these were supposed to have 512MB of RAM, but this post says that the new Samsung Continuum has the same 336MB as the Samsung Fascinate. So, who knows for sure, with rock solid concrete proof that these phones have 512MB??
"The device looks to have the exact same 1 GHz Hummingbird processor, 336 MB of RAM, and Super AMOLED display as the already released Fascinate (we assume the camera and battery are going to be the same as well). "
http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2010/09/30/new-hi-res-images-info-on-verizons-samsung-continuum/

From what I have read. The cappy has 512 but can't use all of it till froyo. 2.1 can't see all 512.
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derek4484 said:
How much RAM does the Captivate really have? Reason I ask is my friend's Droid Incredible constantly has about 270-280MB free, even when he was on 2.1. My Captivate has about 150MB free after doing a task kill. I thought these were supposed to have 512MB of RAM, but this post says that the new Samsung Continuum has the same 336MB as the Samsung Fascinate. So, who knows for sure, with rock solid concrete proof that these phones have 512MB??
"The device looks to have the exact same 1 GHz Hummingbird processor, 336 MB of RAM, and Super AMOLED display as the already released Fascinate (we assume the camera and battery are going to be the same as well). "
http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2010/09/30/new-hi-res-images-info-on-verizons-samsung-continuum/
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You are trying to hard.
Check out the official specs on samsungs web site:
http://www.samsung.com/us/mobile/cell-phones/SGH-I897ZKAATT-features
If you don't believe that, then i don't know what to tell you.

alphadog00 said:
You are trying to hard.
Check out the official specs on samsungs web site:
http://www.samsung.com/us/mobile/cell-phones/SGH-I897ZKAATT-features
If you don't believe that, then i don't know what to tell you.
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Ok, so it says 512MB of RAM. Well why cant we access the whole 512MB?? People were just saying "well 2.1 cant access all of it", which was garbage. My friend's droid incredible on 2.1 accessed all 512MB of its RAM. Now that Froyo is out for Captivate, its own built in task manager says it only has 304MB of RAM.
So, how am I trying hard? And what am I trying hard to do? I'm just wanting to know a solid answer. Where the EFF is the rest of the 512MB of RAM that these phones supposedly have? I regret buying a samjunk phone every day. Should have never wasted a dime on Samjunk.

Take it back; sell it; get rid of it then.
No one forced you to buy it or keep it.
The spec sheet says it has 512MB of RAM - some speculate that some of it used as video memory; other mentions say there is a RAM disk taking up space.
I have many apps open and running and i have not had a problem with running out of memory - so I am not to worried about what is available.

The initramfs uses a few MB - not much, single digits. The stock kernels also include ramdisk support and set up 8 8KiB ramdisks iirc. None of this accounts for the amount "missing", but space reserved for two or three screen-sized buffers, and for texture memory, etc might explain it. I have no idea where people get this idea that eclair kernels can't support 512MB.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App

Unhelpful said:
The initramfs uses a few MB - not much, single digits. The stock kernels also include ramdisk support and set up 8 8KiB ramdisks iirc. None of this accounts for the amount "missing", but space reserved for two or three screen-sized buffers, and for texture memory, etc might explain it. I have no idea where people get this idea that eclair kernels can't support 512MB.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App
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Thank you. Educated answer. I know it has a 512MB chip in it, I dont think anybody is disputing that. What I was wanting to know or figure out is where is the missing RAM? From 512 to 304 is a good bit missing. So out of the 304MB the OS takes up about 160-180, that leaves us with about 120-140ish for program memory. To me, it doesnt make much sense to put 512 in a phone then hide almost half of it from programs. I demo'ed a Moto Droid last November for a month and it came with 256MB and after doing a task kill it would have about the same as these Galaxy S phones do. My guess is that some of the system ram is being reserved for video ram, or other's have speculated that there is a ram disk in there. Maybe a combination of both, vram and ram disk. I think its wrong for samsung to advertise "512MB RAM" to compete with the likes of N1, Droid incredible, EVO 4G, all of which have a true 512MB, but our phones have a large portion of that 512, thats not accessible. It'd be a lot more honest if they advertised 304MB.

Actually 128 MB of the RAM is dedicated to the gpu. I don't know specifics but I'm guess this is part of the reason why the galaxy blows everything else away in gaming. It is a little dissapointing but whatever. I feel the same way bout it as everyone else.
Sent from my SCH-I500 using XDA App

Anybody checked how does it look in i9000 or other GalaxyS-family phones?

Tear-downs have revealed that the phone does have 3 different chips that add up to 512 mb. Unfortunately a sizable portion is reserved for an unknown reason.

Has anybody been able to get a solid answer about where the missing 208MB of RAM is? Is it a ramdisk, is it video ram, is it a little of both? Who knows? Samsung knows but they wont admit that it doesnt have 512MB.
I've emailed samsung customer service several times explaining that my phone system information says 304MB RAM. They just reply, "Captivate does indeed have 512MB of RAM. Thank you for your inquiry.... blah blah blah."
It does have a 512MB chip in it, but what's it being used for, is what I'd like to know. N1 doesnt have this problem. Droid incredible doesnt have this problem. Droid X doesnt, etc. The G2 does, its advertised as 512MB but when you do system info on it, it has 380MB.

I just spoke to samsung level 5, its top secret and they will never disclose the answer! Muahahaha
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App

itsjustaphone said:
I just spoke to samsung level 5, its top secret and they will never disclose the answer! Muahahaha
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App
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lol!
As much as I would also like to know where the rest of the ram goes, it doesn't matter so much when we dominate the quadrant scores with a small tweak
EDIT-forgot link: http://smartphonebenchmarks.com/

ThisWasATriumph said:
Tear-downs have revealed that the phone does have 3 different chips that add up to 512 mb. Unfortunately a sizable portion is reserved for an unknown reason.
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Could u please elaborate this? Or atleast could u pls link to that site?

[Q] Too little RAM?

I've seen other phones that will be released this Q1 or Q2 having 1GB of RAM whilst the Optimus 2X only has 512MB.
I myself have kind of got the feeling that 512MB's would be enough and that 1GB is unnecessary, but I would like your opinions, and maybe an explenation to why 512MB's would be enough?
Since Atrix won't be released in Sweden that pretty much leaves it to Optimus 2X or the Galaxy S2, but the S2 will probably be like 200 dollars more. Would that really be worth the money RAM-wise (other differences doesn't matter that much to me)?

I'm of the mind that 512MB will be fine for the forseeable future. If you consider that the most demanding apps are typically games, and the most impressive games (since GameLoft, Epic etc have signed on with nVidia...) will be developed to Tegra 2 specs, I can't imagine those Tegra 2 specs would preclude running on 512MB of RAM. Following that assumption, by the time 512MB of RAM isn't enough, you will probably be due for an upgrade anyway.
I'm starting to think that the only reason the Atrix has 1GB is because the WebTop mode runs well over 512MB in typical operation. Then, of course, the Galaxy 2 has a gig so that it doesn't look inferior on paper.
Just my conjecturous 2 cents.

Sjael said:
I'm of the mind that 512MB will be fine for the forseeable future. If you consider that the most demanding apps are typically games, and the most impressive games (since GameLoft, Epic etc have signed on with nVidia...) will be developed to Tegra 2 specs, I can't imagine those Tegra 2 specs would preclude running on 512MB of RAM. Following that assumption, by the time 512MB of RAM isn't enough, you will probably be due for an upgrade anyway.
I'm starting to think that the only reason the Atrix has 1GB is because the WebTop mode runs well over 512MB in typical operation. Then, of course, the Galaxy 2 has a gig so that it doesn't look inferior on paper.
Just my conjecturous 2 cents.
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Thanks for your reply! I also thought about the RAM being for the WebTop but then Samsung released the S2 lol.. I would probably agree with you that 512MB will be enough in at least the coming year or so, hell, you can almost run a game like World of Warcraft on 512MB RAM.
Maybe Motorola and Samsung are just putting in hardware that is ahead of the future to atract the customers that want 'the best'. Of course, they are probably slightly better but from what I understand it is kind of hard to fill up 512MB RAM which they also say in Anandtechs review of the Atrix.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4165/the-motorola-atrix-4g-preview
If only LG could put in at least 768MB I wouldn't have to worry

Have to agree with Sjael about the 512MB of RAM in the Atrix being for the laptop dock. In that preview you posted in the benchmark tests the optimus came out on top of the atrix pretty much every time. So don't let the 512 MB of RAM detour you!

I would not mind 512MB RAM(Actually, you can use only 372MB of ram because of the android system)
512MB ram is not that small, and there is no app that needs more than 512MB.
I'm using Optimus 2X, but 512MB RAM was okay

pokerfake said:
I would not mind 512MB RAM(Actually, you can use only 372MB of ram because of the android system)
512MB ram is not that small, and there is no app that needs more than 512MB.
I'm using Optimus 2X, but 512MB RAM was okay
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'Okay' doesn't sound too convincing. Could you tell us about the phone in general? Are you satisfied, how is the battery life etc?

Battery time is simuliar with Samsung Galaxy
LG home sometimes reset after I play some heavy 3D game. I think that its because of RAM, but this problem does not happen if you change your home program
Sent from my LG-SU660 using XDA App

pokerfake said:
Battery time is simuliar with Samsung Galaxy
LG home sometimes reset after I play some heavy 3D game. I think that its because of RAM, but this problem does not happen if you change your home program
Sent from my LG-SU660 using XDA App
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What about gps ?

GPS is waaay better than Samsung Galaxy S
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pokerfake said:
Battery time is simuliar with Samsung Galaxy
LG home sometimes reset after I play some heavy 3D game. I think that its because of RAM, but this problem does not happen if you change your home program
Sent from my LG-SU660 using XDA App
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The LG launcher doesn't look too attractive anyway so i'll probably go for LauncherPro

pokerfake said:
GPS is waaay better than Samsung Galaxy S
Sent from my LG-SU660 using XDA App
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Really ? Oh, this is a great news !

1GB is better than 512MB
but....... i think 512 is enough, also

Well we now have some empirical evidence...
The +64MB RAM kernel gives back 64MB to the user and it makes a *huge* difference to performance in general day to day use for me. I no longer need to use minfreemanager and my launcher and background apps hardly ever get shut down by the system now.
I used to be of the mind that 512 was enough (=372) but with +64 (=436) there's a world of difference.
So, in my experience 512 is a constraint.

Its not the 512mb itself being the limit here, its the way these 512mb are used and how Android is configured to manage the memory by the manufacturer - but yes more ram to work with are allways a benefit.
512mb is plenty in the HTC Desire which default has about 440mb for the user, while the LG only has 372mb (more ram allocated for video than the Desire perhaps ?)
Furthermore the default minfree setting in the Desire is configured to allways leave 140mb free, while the LG is default configured to only leave around 80mb free.
This cause the LG to run low on memory, needing the system to free up memory by shutting down apps that are preloaded, faster and more often than on the Desire.
The extra 64mb you free with the other Kernel can be configured either as more ram for preloadet apps or as just free ram - depending on how agressive you set the minfree setting. The result you get will be a combination of this - if minfree are still set to 80mb then the 64mb are just used to preload more apps, which you will feel as a benefit if switching to one of these preloaded apps, but wont feel as a benefit if you need to run an app that use up more than the free 80mb and which hasnt been preloaded. On the other hand you could divide it and set the minfree setting to 110 and let the rest 34mb be used to preload apps in, that way a running app could use more ram before it would need to shutdown preloaded apps.
I cant say which setting would be the best overall - but for certain the configuration of the memory works better in the Desire than the one in the LG - despite both having 512mb ram

Why 512MB of RAM means no Bionic for me

I've seen a lot of discussion on various Android/Droid forums on the web over the past month or two about the Bionic, and it having 512MB of RAM. A lot of people don't seem to mind, and some people have even said it doesn't matter because it's DDR2, which is faster than regular DDR.
Well, 512MB of RAM is not enough for a dual-core phone you plan to use for 2 years or more. Here's why, in a rather lengthy post that I also put on MyDroidWorld the other night. I've been on the XDA forums for a long time, though I don't post very frequently and I'm curious to see what people will think of my admittedly long post. So, here is why I think people should think long and hard about whether to buy the Bionic when it does come out, assuming it still ships with 512MB of RAM.
Caching.
Ok - let me explain. The single most important factor in performance of a computer is having enough RAM. When a computer runs out of RAM, it starts to use what's called a page file. It's basically a file on your hard drive that acts as additional RAM. Now, DDR3-1600 speed RAM transfers data at 12.8 gigabytes per second. Phenomenally fast. It also has a reaction time of around 5 nanoseconds, also ridiculously fast. When your operating system has to start using the page file because the physical RAM is full, the performance hit is EXTRAORDINARY. Even the best hard disk drives (not counting SSDs) like the latest Raptor from Western Digital cap out at around 155 megabytes per second for reading and writing, and it has a peak latency of 7 milliseconds for reaction time. 1 nanosecond is 1 million milliseconds, which makes the DDR3 RAM over a MILLION times faster reacting than the hard drive, and the transfer rate of the RAM over 80 times faster than the transfer rate of the hard drive.
In real-world terms, it's like you're talking about an ant versus a Porsche 911 Turbo. Most old computers that have long pauses or hang for several seconds doing even basic tasks, it's because they don't have enough RAM and it's caching stuff between the hard drive and the RAM.
Now, whenever Android runs out of RAM, (same with any operating system) it has to start using its page file, which means it starts using this monstrously slow flash memory as RAM. It's like merging onto a freeway that is gridlocked with traffic when you were going hundreds of miles per hour. The flash memory is a lot slower than the Raptor hard drive for data transfer rates, but it has a read time a lot faster; the best-performing ones are generally under 1 microsecond. 1 microsecond is a thousand times slower than 1 nanosecond. The write times are closer to hard drives, though; generally less than 1 millisecond, so like 10x faster than a hard drive but still 100,000 times slower reaction time to writing data than the RAM is.
What this means is, when your permanent storage is flash-based, it has a much faster reaction time than a hard drive but it's still dog-slow compared to RAM; so when Android runs out of RAM, it caches to the page file on the flash memory, and you'll have the same slowdown effect as you do on an old POS computer, but it's not as noticeable because flash memory reacts faster than disk-based hard drives.
The point of all of this is that, 1GB of DDR1 memory on a phone is FAR better than 512MB of DDR2 memory. The 1GB will prevent you from hitting that metaphorical brick wall of caching data to your flash memory when the 512MB won't. We already use 400MB, or more, of our 512MB of RAM on our existing phones just by turning it on and having a couple of widgets/services in the background above & beyond the stock ones. How do you expect to take advantage significantly higher-end applications and games, which also means (for games, primarily) that they take up more RAM, as well?
You can't have higher-quality graphics without needing more RAM, so when that new version of Angry Birds comes out this fall or something that requires two cores and looks amazing, but uses 250MB of RAM to run instead of the 80MB or whatever the regular one uses now, what do you think has to happen? That's right. Android has to cache that much extra data to your flash memory so it can unload it from the RAM, freeing the necessary space to load Angry Birds HD. This causes more of a delay as it's writing data, and will cause extra choppiness, etc. Another thing to keep in mind is that, as resolutions increase, so do the texture sizes for all applications and widgets that you use, assuming they support the new resolution. More size needed, which takes up more space in RAM.
Don't be fooled. When truly good and proper dual-core benchmarks come out, 1GB RAM dual-core phones will spank their 512MB RAM dual-core brethren for real-world performance in games, and other high-memory applications. Also, excessive caching greatly increases the chance of flash memory going bad. Not a common occurrence if it was fine when shipped, but still something to think about.
So, in summary, even though the performance hit from caching to flash memory isn't as bad as caching to hard disk drives, it's still a tremendous slowdown and it will matter for dual-core phones way more than for single-core ones. The average amount of RAM installed on dual-core desktop computers from Dell/HP/etc. was significantly higher than what the average was for the previous single-core generations were, and there are reasons for that. Primarily, the same reasons I just outlined. In simple terms, faster processors can do more things, which necessarily requires more RAM.
Sorry for the wall of text, I tried to be more concise but it kind of got away from me. I'm not buying a Bionic because it has 512MB of RAM. After owning it a year, it'll be having performance issues on top-end dual-core-required games that run just fine on phones like the Atrix.

I'm sorry because I know this is probably going to come across the wrong way, but WOW, you spent a lot of time writing that up, and too much time for me to read it alll, especially considering Motorola has pulled back on the Bionic and it's receiving "enhancements". I guess what I'm saying is why all the speculation/conjecture until we know the revised specs? Maybe it'll land with 8GB of DDR 6 RAM.

I'm hoping Motorola gives Verizon a phone that is higher end than the Atrix. Afterall Verizon has done much more than ATT in the way of supporting Moto..when they needed it. Anxious to see what Big Red winds up with.
Sent from my ERIS using XDA Premium App

I disagree that ram is the single most important factor of performance of a computer.
hard drives are the biggest bottleneck in a computer. this is why I use a vertex 3 ssd.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA Premium App

gemro311 said:
I'm hoping Motorola gives Verizon a phone that is higher end than the Atrix. Afterall Verizon has done much more than ATT in the way of supporting Moto..when they needed it. Anxious to see what Big Red winds up with.
Sent from my ERIS using XDA Premium App
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I concur, really hope VZW pushes for a premier device

I disagree. Android isn't expanding as an OS at some breakneck pace and 512MB is definitely suitable for the near future. 1GB is absolutely not necessary for great performance in a phone. RAM is a bottleneck, but it is not something that magically allows for better performance if the device isn't hitting the pagefile anyway.
The way that Android manages applications will allow 512MB phones to be relevant for some time. The Bionic will be a solid phone for the next year, but there will always be something bigger and better next year. Phones aren't future-proof.

I was just checking out this thread and wanted to say maybe the reason that the atrix comes with 1gb of ram is because of the extra contraption that you can buy along with. It looks like a netbook but is not very well performing and who would even care to rely on it for anything I don't know.

gemro311 said:
I'm hoping Motorola gives Verizon a phone that is higher end than the Atrix. Afterall Verizon has done much more than ATT in the way of supporting Moto..when they needed it. Anxious to see what Big Red winds up with.
Sent from my ERIS using XDA Premium App
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I certainly hope Motorola makes the required improvements, but you also need to keep in mind Verizon approves and in many if not all cases specs the phones they want. They chose the specs, they had to live with the specs. I think once they saw what was coming they figured it was no longer premiere and wanted changes made.
Regardless of why its been pulled back the fact that it was is good, but if its going to take 4-5 months to get it out the door they should have just scrapped it altogether.

E30kid said:
I disagree. Android isn't expanding as an OS at some breakneck pace and 512MB is definitely suitable for the near future. 1GB is absolutely not necessary for great performance in a phone. RAM is a bottleneck, but it is not something that magically allows for better performance if the device isn't hitting the pagefile anyway.
The way that Android manages applications will allow 512MB phones to be relevant for some time. The Bionic will be a solid phone for the next year, but there will always be something bigger and better next year. Phones aren't future-proof.
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Well, wait for Ice Cream and we'll see. Since the future Android version will also run in tablets, it is likely that it will have huge memory requirements.
By the way, my Acer Liquid A1 can't be officially upgraded to Froyo because it only has 256Mb. Later Liquid models with 512Mb are upgradeable. At the time I bought it, 512Mb seemed unnecessary because the Nexus One operating system only supported 256Mb, having the other 256Mb wasted. This was only 12 months ago...

galaxyjeff said:
I was just checking out this thread and wanted to say maybe the reason that the atrix comes with 1gb of ram is because of the extra contraption that you can buy along with. It looks like a netbook but is not very well performing and who would even care to rely on it for anything I don't know.
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I think you are on to something here. I think I read somewhere that the atrix only uses 512 mb when not connected to the dock. I have the inspire which has 768 mb, and I came from the captivate which was 512 mb, and I done know if is the ram or what but this phone performs way better than the captivate. Even when I bought the inspire, right out the box stock, preformed much better than a captivate overclocked with an ext4 filesystem kernel. Not that this is empirical evidence, but hey.
Sent from my HTC Desire HD using XDA Premium App

cryptiq said:
I'm sorry because I know this is probably going to come across the wrong way, but WOW, you spent a lot of time writing that up, and too much time for me to read it alll, especially considering Motorola has pulled back on the Bionic and it's receiving "enhancements". I guess what I'm saying is why all the speculation/conjecture until we know the revised specs? Maybe it'll land with 8GB of DDR 6 RAM.
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I lol'd. But seriously 512 MB of RAM is more than enough... It's a PHONE not a high end desktop system. I play tons of games on my x2 and with alot of crap in the backround open, and I notice zero performance hits. If you are spending all day monitoring your RAM on your phone and trying to measure FPS loss, load time differences, etc. I suggest that you try to pick up a new hobby ASAP, OCDing will be the end of you. Best of luck!
Edit: I wouldn't worry about it either! Bionic probably won't come out anyways, and if it does, another phone with 1GB to satisfy your OCD probably will be out by then.

As of now, I feel ALL future top tier smart phones need to come equipped with at least 1GB of DDR2. The G2x, for example, will most likely have issues running a custom ice cream rom. And people will be upset.. especially after putting up with all of the other various problems that particular phone has.

OP, I don't agree entirely with your explanation of the use of caching by the OS - for all 3 major computer OSes, no matter how much excess RAM you have, they will start caching data to the hard drive, whether you like it or not. Obviously if you run out of RAM, it has to do so, but it'll even do it long before you've hit that cap - just because it determines an application has gone "inactive". Now I haven't read up on Android enough to know whether this is 100% true for it, too, but considering it's running a linux kernel, I would imagine so. So just like the 8GB of RAM in my desktop doesn't necessarily help for everyday computing needs, 1GB vs 512mb on the Bionic may not make a huge difference.

raptordrew said:
OP, I don't agree entirely with your explanation of the use of caching by the OS - for all 3 major computer OSes, no matter how much excess RAM you have, they will start caching data to the hard drive, whether you like it or not. Obviously if you run out of RAM, it has to do so, but it'll even do it long before you've hit that cap - just because it determines an application has gone "inactive". Now I haven't read up on Android enough to know whether this is 100% true for it, too, but considering it's running a linux kernel, I would imagine so. So just like the 8GB of RAM in my desktop doesn't necessarily help for everyday computing needs, 1GB vs 512mb on the Bionic may not make a huge difference.
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i beg to differ
my captivate; even though its a single core...is still quite capable at most everyday tasks...only thing lacking is the RAM
my phone will slow to a crawl after entering twitter, switching to pulse and then going back to my homescreen....
not to mention my launcher keeps getting killed by android as it keeps running out of RAM

droid_does said:
i beg to differ
my captivate; even though its a single core...is still quite capable at most everyday tasks...only thing lacking is the RAM
my phone will slow to a crawl after entering twitter, switching to pulse and then going back to my homescreen....
not to mention my launcher keeps getting killed by android as it keeps running out of RAM
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I have to lol at this one. Absolutely none of those issues have to do with amount of RAM. In fact the launcher problem has nothing to do with RAM at all.
Sent from my ADR6400L using XDA App

While I appreciate other people who have the same amount of passion for phones as I do, I just have two words to say about anyone saying phones with 512 mb ram will not get Ice Cream Sandwich. Nexus S.
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mb02 said:
I have to lol at this one. Absolutely none of those issues have to do with amount of RAM. In fact the launcher problem has nothing to do with RAM at all.
Sent from my ADR6400L using XDA App
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it does as android keeps killing it to free up more RAM to use......

droid_does said:
it does as android keeps killing it to free up more RAM to use......
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Yea the task manager is killing the apps to keep ram freed up, as in stopping unused processes etc. That's just the aggressive working of the management software that would run just the same if you even had 8GB of ram.
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timothymilla said:
While I appreciate other people who have the same amount of passion for phones as I do, I just have two words to say about anyone saying phones with 512 mb ram will not get Ice Cream Sandwich. Nexus S.
Sent from my ADR6400L using XDA App
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Remember when everyone thought Gingerbread would require a 1GHz processor as a system requirement, which was later debunked?
http://www.talkandroid.com/23041-so...ngerbread-update-due-to-1ghz-cpu-requirement/
Nobody can say what will and will not get updated for sure, although I will venture to say that it's HIGHLY likely the Nexus S will be getting 2.4, you're right.

zetsumeikuro said:
I lol'd. But seriously 512 MB of RAM is more than enough... It's a PHONE not a high end desktop system. I play tons of games on my x2 and with alot of crap in the backround open, and I notice zero performance hits. If you are spending all day monitoring your RAM on your phone and trying to measure FPS loss, load time differences, etc. I suggest that you try to pick up a new hobby ASAP, OCDing will be the end of you. Best of luck!
Edit: I wouldn't worry about it either! Bionic probably won't come out anyways, and if it does, another phone with 1GB to satisfy your OCD probably will be out by then.
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512 mb is not enough for a dual core 4G phone it just isnt. the thunderbolt has 768 mb and its only single core and 4G and let me tell you it would be way faster with the 1024 mb of ram i cant imagine how laggy the bionic would be if you start doing anything with it! the 512 ram will be ate up in no time! i sure hope verizon reconsiders and adds more ram or i probably wont use this device as my daily phone either keep the thunderbolt with more ram which is sad cause it has been out for awhile now and the droid x also has 512 ram and it has been out for a year and they cant make improvements?? and they are going to want $299+++ for this phone ON CONTRACT! it better have more than 512 ram or it aint worth a lick! rip this phone open and put my own ram in it!

how much ram do we really have?

i thought the cappy had 512 mb of ram... why do all the roms have like 341? im confused >.< either i looked at 3 faulty spec sheets for the captivate or we arent utilizing the full ram potential for the captivate. would someone explain the truth on this matter to a captivate noob like me?

i could be wrong but i believe the 341 is available to use ram, while the rest is being used by the phone to function.

nehal51086 said:
i could be wrong but i believe the 341 is available to use ram, while the rest is being used by the phone to function.
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that would make sense, but that makes the specs misleading... i traded my HD2 for a cappy because the spec sheet said 512mb of ram and the HD2 only has 411 available to the OS when running android from nand because the rest is dedicated to winmo only (which sucks massively), and i wanted more ram lol, guess i should have looked harder into things, but regardless the captivate is "better" in very many areas, but RAM is literally my deciding factor for so many things lately (like t-mobile with the sensation or sprint with the evo 3d, i would say evo 3d because it has 256mb or so more ram)

This question has been asked and answered several times....
the phone does have 512mb of ram. Like the person above me said the phones os and graphics take up a portion of the ram. All computers and smart phones work the same way.
As a side note android handles ram very well. You don't need to manage it at all by freeing it up. free ram is wasted ram as the os will have to load it back up anyways
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App

crystalhand said:
This question has been asked and answered several times....
the phone does have 512mb of ram. Like the person above me said the phones os and graphics take up a portion of the ram. All computers and smart phones work the same way.
As a side note android handles ram very well. You don't need to manage it at all by freeing it up. free ram is wasted ram as the os will have to load it back up anyways
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
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i know this very well, free ram can be considered wasted ram, unless you need 200mb or so free for a tegra class game, but i think android handles ram awesomely to an extent but can be improved by implementing autokiller memory optimizer in a knowledgable and appropriate way that doesnt hurt optimizations android already has in place, zipaligning, increasing the dalvik heap size, etc... can all be done, im not asking about how android handles ram or anything, and im sorry i didnt know the question had been asked several times i am brand new to the captivate today, literally, and was doing not but seeking information i didnt understand or know, thank you for the explaination though i appreciate it, and im glad to know that my new captivate will utilize the left over 171mb of ram for something unlike my HD2 that couldnt access the last 100mb because it was designated to winmo only. i had an idea that was the case and i was just clarifying to myself because i kept reading rom changelogs stating "enabled more ram now 341mb available" or something along the lines of that and thought to myself "there should be more available already" lol

I honestly think 341MB is enough.

341 MB is alot. But something is taking all that up too. On a fresh boot, half of it is used, and I have 140~170 MB. Its even worse on GB. Most ive gotten is 100 MB free.
So if the half of the 341 plus the mysterious 171 MB that is nowhere to be found, I dont get whats using the other 171 that is not part of the 341. Lol confusing

Same happens to me. Who knows, lol
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I think its the user interface graphics, like scrolling quality is good because that ram is dedicated to things
like that
Sent from cyanogen mod 7

Ram insufficient?

Do you feel that the 512 mb ram is insufficient?? usually my phone get ard 130+ mb ram free. I Do personally feel regret getting o2x instead of atrix. Do anyone of you feel the same??

tankwokhwee said:
Do you feel that the 512 mb ram is insufficient?? usually my phone get ard 130+ mb ram free. I Do personally feel regret getting o2x instead of atrix. Do anyone of you feel the same??
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Nope no regrets. Doesn't matter 130+mb, phone still works like a charm.

Nope, the RAM is fine IMO.
Sure as hell don't wish I bought an Atrix, PenTile displays are not for winners.

mine is @ 100-130 pretty much all the time, runs fine here
stock 2.2.2

I'm rooted and modified.
Around 160/180 free.

I not quite sure about my thinking, because every time i tried to play flash using the browser, after loading something i get FC, and is it due to insufficient of ram? I tried the same Flash on SGS II, i works perfectly.

tankwokhwee said:
I not quite sure about my thinking, because every time i tried to play flash using the browser, after loading something i get FC, and is it due to insufficient of ram? I tried the same Flash on SGS II, i works perfectly.
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No issues here. What rom you on?

Stock v10d
Sent from my LG-P990 using XDA App

Free RAM is useless. Better app and memory management, well, that's another thing.
Android generally has a problem with auto-starting apps, IMHO. I go mad when I see an app running, while knowing that I didn't start it, don't need it today or any day soon. But it's there, just consuming phone's resources and annoying me. Damn.
Then I kill few of them, even though I read somewhere it's contra productive. That may be true in some ways, only it is not confirmed by subjective feeling which tells me the opposite. Phone gets faster

tankwokhwee said:
Do you feel that the 512 mb ram is insufficient?? usually my phone get ard 130+ mb ram free. I Do personally feel regret getting o2x instead of atrix. Do anyone of you feel the same??
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Click to collapse
i feel it this way 2 - just watch this and u will understand why http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QSM27Mvn5Fo and think that is just a prototype same hardware but 1gb of ram

I think that it is insufficient for me sometimes, well maybe thats because some of those useless apps/services are running, we can disable/freeze it by 3rd party app tho.
But overall, the memory is good and enough for me